I don’t want to say I quit, but I will say I don’t have the time. Not right now.

So tomorrow…or tonight…or when I can get to it, I will change the theme of this blog, update it randomly simply to capture things I don’t want to forget. Or them to forget.

And so this space will no longer be for you or even my sister…but just for them. You know the them. The ones that still ask me to read to them at night, the ones that still like to make things with pipecleaners and glue and glitter, and the ones that still cry for me when they fall from their bike. The ones that need me to parent for two.

So long for now.

Facebook Fundraiser Saves College Student Demorris Davis

Shared via AddThis

So why am I so fed up? Because there is so much I want to do in my house and I can’t get anyone to help me. I have tables that I want sanded and painted and banisters I need hung and a bathroom that just really needs some love. I have pictures I need hung, bookcases that need refurbished and a fireplace that is begging to be painted.

I have asked my dad. And I have asked my mom. I have asked my neighbor. And I have asked my best friend. They all gave me that fake “oh yeah, okay, sure I’ll help..it will be fun!” But then they didn’t come. No one wants to help me! Tiffany put your hand down, you moved too far away and I’m still not over it.

I had a brand new vanity and sink top that sat in my hallway for a year. No kidding…a year. Until my sweet brother-in-law came to my house to install it while he and my sister and their family were here ON THEIR VACATION. Why did my b-i-l have to do this for me? Oh that’s because my dad just owns his own remodeling business and he can do anything. Oh wait.

And I make lots of excuses for not doing what I should just do my ownself! So I am! 

The first project is an old kitchen table that sits in my front room, covered with a tablecloth because it is so so ugly. I started stripping and sanding last night and I can’t wait to apply the first coat of turquoise paint I bought a few months ago for another project. I’m going to use the tablecloth to cover the chairs. I am! I am! I am! Sorry, just trying to motivate myself.  

Ok I lied, this (below) was the first project. And it sat on my craft table for a year. No kidding….a year. But I finished it last night too! Yay me! Still motivating.

Yes I know it’s just scrapbook paper covered wooden letters, and yes I know everyone in the blogosphere has already done it, and yes I know it’s so 2008, but it’s a craft project, ok? And I finished it! And I even hung them on the wall above the chore board and it looks quite cute thankyouverymuch.

Oh wait – there’s the paint! That blue paint on the little round table. That’s the blue for the other table. Hmm how bout that. And that birdhouse….my nephew made for me with his own tools and smarts. He’s 8. 9? He’s young. And really talented in the woodworking department. And I guess I’ll go ahead and tell you that I have been planning to paint said birdhouse for months now and haven’t gotten to it. Imagine that.

So now about that fireplace…..I’m thinking orange. Really.

That’ll show my dad not to help me next time.

Kidding.

Sort of.

Stay tuned….I’ll post some pics of the table on Monday.

Dear Lady in the Grocery Store, or the Mall, or the line at the Pharmacy,

I realize you are of an older generation and sometimes change is hard. Especially when it involves race relations, which we all know is a toughy. I am sure seeing a white lady with brown kids can be a little perplexing and sometimes some of  your silly questions can even be validated. Like are my kids adopted. That one I can give you I suppose. My youngest two pretty much look nothing like me and they are well, brown. But the questions that are really none of your business anyway like “Are you married?” and then the one that always follows when I say no, “Do they all have the same dad?”, um, that’s a little much. I apologize if you ask me these questions on a bad day when I may answer by saying “I dunno, the UPS man just dropped them off one day” or “Why yes they do, have you ever heard of Denzel Washington?”

I am not near as nice when the really silly questions come out like “Is that her natural hair color?” (my red head) or “Is her hair that curly naturally?” so try to avoid those. I once convinced a lady at the playland at the mall that I paid $200 every 6 weeks to have their hair permed and professionally colored. They were 2,3, and 4 at the time. She nodded along and then made a beeline for her Canasta meeting to tell everyone all about the crazy white lady at the mall.   

I can also cut some slack on the truly sympathetic questions like “How on earth do you keep it all together raisin’ those girls without a husband?” to which I can usually just say “Easy – I just don’t keep it all together” and then point to my mismatched socks and unbrushed hair.

My new favorite is the one I was asked when we were at the dentist last. I mentioned to the girls that we needed to get moving so we could get Emma to therapy on time; an appointment that was just 20 minutes away. After brazenly asking me what she went to therapy for, I answered “um, she sees a therapist for her ADHD.” “Oh you really believe in that ADHD stuff?”

Yeah, don’t ever think it is okay to ask these kinds of questions really. If you don’t believe in ADHD I would be delighted to invite you to my house at midnight when she is so worked up and fidgety she can’t close her eyes when it is clear she is exhausted. Those nights are always a blast.

So I see that some aspects of my life can seem a little curious and just sometimes you feel like you must ask the question that is burning in your mind. But do me a favor, don’t ask me.

But lady from the gas station this morning, if you are reading this, questions like “Aren’t they just the cutest things?” are fine. Because why yes, yes they are and thank you for noticing.

Love,

Mandy

I came home yesterday after a particularly ordinary day and remembered we couldn’t park on our street all week due to paving. We parked a few blocks away at the family dollar, walked inside to ask if we could leave our car there overnight and then proceeded home. After begrudgingly making dinner, cooking the zuchinni too long and getting aggravated with myself for ever volunteering to work the concession stand at practice, I instructed the girls to head upstairs to change from their school uniforms to play clothes. Once again we headed outside on our walk to retrieve the car and I could feel the bad mood just creeping up inside me. I started to think about the two new projects I have taken on at work and all the things I am behind on. Just as I was to turn the corner, I turned around to count heads and realized Emmalee was lagging behind. Nearly a block away, she was crouched down writing on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk she must have had stashed in her pocket. Ever since my mom and I took the girls to see G-Force, she has been convinced she is a special agent with highly secretive missions to carry out. She slinks everywhere, is forever writing secret codes and gets in military mode, where she talks like she has been enlisted her whole life.

“Come on Emmy, we gotta get going”…I yelled back to her.

“Ok, mama – I am writing messages, here I come.”

We all packed in the car and made our way to football practice. I worked at the concession halfheartedly for an hour or so, and then annoyingly waited for the girls to help pick up trash.

We finally arrived back home when I really got irritated. I was tired, I was hot, I was hungry and I did not want to park two blocks away from my house in the dark.

I took a deep breath, parked the car and waited while the girls gathered the 42 pounds of crap they have to take with us everywhere we go, and made sure all the doors were locked. Cori started talking to me about a dog she saw at practice and to be honest, I kind of tuned her out. I was thinking about myself, about how much I had to do, about what a funky mood I was in for no good reason at all really.

As we started down the slope towards home I caught a glimpse of Emma’s “messages” in the light of the streetlamps. There scrawled in her adorable first grade script, every two feet or so, read a very elementary message, but one that made  a big impact on her mama……Have a good day.

That’s it.

Just Have a good day. To anyone that wanted to read it.

I imagine she made a few people having to walk blocks to their home that day stop and smile.

With that, my lips curled up, I got myself a little head start, and then yelled backwards “Last one home is a rotten egg” and took off.

Shortly behind me, and then in front of me, three sets of running feet and just enough giggles to push me into a good day after all.

I am just getting Emma signed up for fall soccer. She has been asking for years and finally I decided that with Liv not playing basketball until October, and Cori’s dance classes scheduled way in advance, I could possible squeeze in the concept of being a soccer mom. Oy.

I got online to download the registration forms for the league in our area, when I came across their mission statement. Basically it was a bunch of crap about “it’s all about fun and not winning and all the kids will receive a trohpy”. Typical.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that children should learn the fundamentals before focusing on just winning all the time. And I understand that there are some kids that are less than athletic (uh, I was one of those kids) but if they can’t hack it playing softball or football, then for heaven’s sake, pull your kid from the team and buy them some paintbrushes or a tuba. Not everyone is athletic. And guess what? That’s okay.

However, I do not believe in the concept of “not encouraging winning” and the theory that all children should receive a trophy just for participating. You get cute shirts with your name on the back, and maybe a few bruises for participating. You get trophies for winning. If there was no winner, there wouldn’t be two teams. It’s life. You win some and you lose some and 12 years from now, give or take, when your little prince or princess gets their first job, a minimal effort isn’t going to get them a trophy. It’s gonna get them fired.

I think sports should encourage competition and the thrill of working really hard to be the best at something. If you have read this blog ever before you probably know by now that my man is a football coach and we are pretty involved in youth sports. Pretty involved meaning every. single. Saturday and sometimes Sunday are spent at youth sporting events from April until late November. While I am all for good sportsmanship, I am also all for beating the tar out of the other team. And well, if they lose 56-0, I’m sorry about that. (Not really.)

Will I be sad when my little baby loses her first soccer game? Of course I will. Will I make her run laps and practice in the backyard in the pouring down rain to get better? No. But I will secretly hope that when she is 16, she will have stuck with soccer and will feel the pride it gives her to be on a team, and I hope that she wants to practice in the backyard in the pouring down rain. Because that is what you do to get better. To become an expert at your craft. To become the winner.

I think most children will succeed at sports if pushed to their potential. I think the best coaches are not afraid to expect greatness from kids. Because most kids have greatness inside them and they need not be treated like porcelain. My boyfriend teaches 7 and 8 year old kids in football. He has an 8 year old quarterback that can run plays and call audibles (basically change the play based on what defense the other team is running). Again, he is 8 years old and undoubtedly knows more about the game of football than I do. There is not a team in our relatively large city that can beat us. There are no other 8 year old quarterbacks calling plays. Not because they can’t, or don’t have the potential, because their coaches aren’t recognizing what they are capable of.

Just like in life, you have to have a drive, a desire to succeed in sports and you have to put the work in. Period. You have to practice. I would never tell my kids “aw, you got an F in English. Oh, that’s okay honey, you tried your best”. Uh, no. The first thing I would be doing is figuring out why they got that F in English and what exactly we can do to get the grade up in the future. Therefore, I sure as hell am not going to tell my kids “Aw, I saw that ball whizzing right past you, but that’s okay that you were playing with your hair and didn’t notice, there is always next time.” I will instead take that opportunity to teach her that she needs to focus, she needs to try at least, and if she doesn’t like losing, then she sure better do her part to keep it from happening. That’s what you do when you are on a team.

That, and hopefully, win trophies.

I like summertime the best. I would just as soon lie in bed with the windows open and the fan running than the central air. I like to listen to the noises the night makes in town.

When I first moved to Cincinnati to go to college from the farm I grew up on, I couldn’t sleep for the first solid week I lived there. Finally on the weekend my roommate and I drove to the Walmart and I purchased myself a solid black, King size sheet. As soon as I got back to the apartment I ripped open the packaging and my roomie and I went to hanging it from my curtain rods. At least the light issue was resolved…but now for the noise. All the noise.

A few weeks later I found myself slowly walking through the gift shop at the Union Terminal when I came upon a little shelf of those CDs that play different environments, the ocean, the amazon….I found a CD entitled “sounds of the country” or something as obvious. I bought that CD that day, and that night I actually slept. I had to play the CD a little louder than it was probably designed for to drown out the endless line of ambulances that drove up and down Martin Luther King blvd all night, but the sounds of the crickets seemed to do the trick. After a few months, I didn’t need the CD anymore, and before long, I could fall asleep in the lounge at school with no problem whatsoever.

Now 10 years later I live in a small little town on the outskirts of a pretty big city, but at night, the noises are the same…the ambulance or an occasional firetruck, teenagers playing their car stereos too loud, brakes squeaking at the stop sign, people talking loudly on their cell phone at the bus stop….

And then the clock turns 10:38, or roughly that time, and all the noise seems to sort of fall away to make room for the train.

It travels just a block away from my house over a trussel that passes over the main street in town. It starts with a rumble and sometimes a whistle, but it creaks and squeals along just like someone was playing the soundtrack to a movie. Then the TV stand starts to squeak and the ceiling fan sways, and slowly and gently my bed moves from side to side, shaking from the presence of the huge locomotive moving along 200 feet from my house.

The trains go by all day, and even much later than 10:38pm, but this is most often the time I am just lying in bed and really notice it’s presence. That small window of time when you have just gotten comfortable, positioned your arm just right under your head, and you stop moving, and you just lie there listening. If there is a movie on the TV, or I am on the phone, or perhaps the kids are for some reason still up and running around, I may not even notice it.

And just as quickly as it comes, it goes away again, moving along to flirt with some other town and the noises of the city come back…

Cars beeping, kids up the block skateboarding under the streetlights, dogs barking.

And then….

Snoring.

I had a similar situation happen when my girls were young. We were at a playland inside a large toy store in our area when two other mothers pulled there kids from the area when they discovered their sons were playing and touching hands with my very brown daughter, 2 years old at the time. They literally gasped and pulled their kids away as if being black was a disease their children could catch from mine.  Cori was too young to realize, but I was broken hearted and for the first real time, I was embarassed of my race and the way some people can act that are a part of it.

Imagine the way these children felt…and worse, the mothers that love them.

 Please, please, please, I beg you….when you meet someone, even a stranger on the street, just remember, they have feelings like you, emotions, dreams, and ALL kids get excited to go swimming. What if this were your child, niece, cousin, sister?

I have a love/hate relationship with cable television. The HDTV, A&E, History Channel, Food Network lover in me misses cable very much.

The mother in me? Does not.

Since I got the cable turned off there have been almost nightly games of Chutes and Ladders, there is a perpetual Monopoly board set up in the playroom and there are not one, but two puzzles simultaneously being worked at different areas of our house by whomever stops by for a few minutes to fit a piece. There are popsicle drips all over the bottom step of our landing and Corina has been putting a serious hurting on the roller skates she found at a neighborhood yard sale last weekend.

We have three seperate new family art projects hanging in the house and library books have been acquired to teach us all how to make a small herb garden work on our back porch.

The whirlwind of summer has been coupled with the peacefulness of a house with no Hannah Montana, fighting over the remote or “just one more show before bed mama”.

Now, what to do with four televisions?

Well, three. A DVD night piled into one bed is still pretty sweet.

Think maybe that’s why I can’t sneeze without peeing myself just a little bit?

And with that I would like to wish you a Happy 4th! Be safe!

So last week we set out on an Internet scavenger hunt to find as many cool but mostly inexpensive, ideally free, activities to do in Cincinnati. Do you believe we came up with over 30 activities? We have marked a few off our list and I have taken photos….maybe I will get around to posting some soon.

So often I get discouraged and sad about the things we can’t do as a one-income family, but I tell you what, the last two weeks have taught me alot about making the most of what you have and being grateful for having these kids that are up for anything…that are just as happy playing at the tower park in our small city as they are at the hugely expensive theme park across the river.

So far our summer has included making strawberry shortcake from fresh strawberries brought to us by a neighbor, free lawn seats at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Riverbend, covering every single inch of the sidewalk in front of our house with sidewalk chalk, free Saturday night movies in Fountain Square, and tonight we are headed to Free Fridays at the Union Terminal to play around in the Children’s Museum.

What are you doing this summer?

I hope it includes watermelon, flip flops and little kids to love on.

My dearest baby sister is celebrating her 29th birthday today!!!

I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become.  I hope today is a  celebration of how special you are to so many people.  I love you!

But I am having free lunch and a HUGE chocolate cake courtesy of my boss and that makes me a pretty happy girl today.

Wanna get me something for my birthday…..

Be nice to a random stranger today, do something unexpected. If they ask you why, say “cause it’s Mandy’s birthday.”

That would be very cool.

“Mama, why do you keep doing that, are you ok?

“Oh yeah, I’m fine, just really thirsty. My throat feels scratchy and burny.”

“The figurative language for that statement would be ‘I have a frog in my throat’” she said matter-of-factly.

“Oh ok.” I said with eyebrows raised, trying not to giggle.

Kinda made me feel a little silly for using words like scratchy and burny.

But not as silly as trying to read Oliver Twist along with her and giving up by chapter three. What on earth will this child be reading by high school?